Collared – Review

I’ll admit to being a judgmental book reader. I totally judge a book by its cover, title, author, and pretty much any other way you can imagine. I was intrigued by the cover of this book; it is beautiful, but I could not figure out why a book would be titled Collared. If you’re apprehensive about reading it for the same reason I was, forget about it right now. I daresay it is unlike anything you have ever read before, in the best possible way. All uncertainty about the title will be revealed during your reading, and this book is assuredly a must read.

After reading It Ends with Us by Colleen Hoover, I kept seeing this book floating around Goodreads and mentioned in comments on Facebook posts comparing the two. The books are not exactly related in subject matter, but I can see why people recommended Collared. It is deeply emotional and it touches on some difficult subject matter, though I doubt many people have had to deal with this subject firsthand. One of my favorite things about reading is when the author makes me feel. As someone who reads frequently, this is not something all authors can do. Nicole Williams gave me the whole spectrum of feels! My stomach dropped, my heart felt like it could burst, I wanted to cry, I longed for resolution, and sometimes felt trapped along with Jade. Most of all, I loved that this story is not a conventional romance story full of lusty scenes and social drama. The romance is not even, in my opinion, the heart of the story.
Jade is a seventeen-year-old high school student, who has the most perfect night of her life until someone snatches her out of her contented world. Her safe community is shaken, her parents are heartbroken, but her boyfriend never loses hope. We catch up with Jade years later, a shell of the carefree teenager she was…
Typically I prefer not to read blurbs for books because I feel they give too much of the storyline away. In this case, I think readers should most definitely follow my lead and skip the blurb! The tidbit above is all the reader should go into the story knowing. Go in blind, come out with eyes opened to things you may have never considered before.